After reading the most recent blog entry by former ROH Booker Gabe Sapolsky, where he was talking about Closure with ROH, i´m just gonna do the same thing. I also need some closure with ROH. It actually goes on my nerves that i´m still interested in them even if there’s nothing happening i personally think is interesting. I turned on ROH some time ago, but i can´t get rid of thinking about them completely. I´m still a regular reader on the message boards and i watch the video wire every time it comes out. I don´t know exactly why i don´t want to watch ROH anymore. Throughout the second half of 2008 i was just disappointed with many things which don´t only concern the shows but also include the moderation of the forums, business decisions and it just didn´t feel like “my ROH” anymore. But after reading Gabe´s Blog, I at least got a (possible) clue why i still can´t get them out of my head completely. It might have something to do with a project i tried to start in May 2007. And just like Gabe giving away his booking ideas, i am releasing that stuff now to get it out of my head.
Like some of you might know, about one and a half years ago, i tried to put together a regular ROH Online-Fanzine. I e-mailed Gabe about it, if we could use the ROH Logo in our Logo, but he turned me down because he thought it would make it look official. Unfortunately i already had all the designs done, off course with the logo in it, and i didn´t feel like changing them again. Then i received an E-Mail from ROHHelp (i probably wrote both, because i didn´t know who to turn to) saying they had to see the finished product first). I wasn´t satisfied with this answer either. But that wasn´t the reason that the project actually never started.
Before all that happened i started a thread on the ROH Forums, looking for creative people to make a Fanzine. I picked up 5 People from the Message Boards. i also looked them up on the Internet after emailing with them and knowing their real names and email-addresses. It turned out that one woman from the UK was the one who always uploaded the ROH shows on YouTube and Dailymotion. I always thought 13 year old boys do that, but she was quite an intelligent and creative woman. But I had to tell her that i do not want to work with her, because I didn´t want someone who does something like that on the magazine, because it would link us somehow to this stuff. Off course, it was her personal thing, but if i could find that out, everybody could find it out and then blame us as a whole for it. I don´t know if this really hurts ROH DVD Sales, but it´s illegal and shouldn´t be done. She immediatly deleted all the Shows she had uploaded before, causing Chaos on AllUC and other videolink portals lol. So i thought she really wants to work on the magazine if she does that and also brought her in because i liked her work.
I couldn´t find any problems with the other people. So the Team was there, everybody told me what he can do and i told them to send me their work until (i think) May 30th. I gave them only one week, but it wasn´t much they had to do. It was stuff they were already doing and may be even publishing on the web anyways, but separately and without a good stage to present it. On the day that was probably May 30th, i only had a email from Kyle who wrote a column named “tales from the town” (more on what it was in the next part). He said he couldn´t make it and that was OK. I knew he tried to finish it, because he updated me throughout the week with some ideas and some parts he wrote. I wasn’t mad at him or so..Off course i was a little upset that we couldn’t make the release date we announced. Me and my girlfriend worked our cute little asses off, but i wasn´t mad at him. Oh Wait! I had only one Mail, what about the others? I thought it still would be ok if they would send it one or two days later, but nothing happened. So I wrote them what happened but i never got an answer. Kyle did the right thing, but the others just ignored my mails then. I don´t know if it was laziness or something else. But i don´t care anymore anyways. So the Project never really started, but off course that was my fault too, because i just picked the first persons who wanted to contribute to it, after the thread was up for some days. When they all looked fine after checking them on the interwebs, i thought it would be OK. Now i know i was wrong. I shouldn´t try to rush into projects like that, but when the idea is hot, i try to get it done as fast as possible. In this and the next posts i will show you some stuff i planned to release with this magazine.
It´s Name was “ROH Scramble Mag – your unofficial, unprofessional and unpredictable ROH Magazine”. The Website i was building should have looked like this, but off course, it wasn’t the final version – since there was and will never be a final version:
I´m sorry that the picture doesn’t get bigger. I haven´t looked at the new next-gen gallery plugin yet, but i will try to solve the problem when i have time. Right now, i want to get this done. So let´s go from top to bottom. I did not know WordPress at that time and wasn´t good at css either, so it was all hardcoded in html. On the Frontpage you found the Editorial followed by the Index and below that there should have been teasers for all the features. I will not go on your nerves with the editorial. You would only laugh at sentences like “it´s great to see something work out that well” and “thank you to everybody involved for making this possible.” Yep, i wrote it while i was coding the site and i really thought we would make it. So let´s start with the Content.
“Makeover without Honor” was a feature that should show what could have happened to a Wrestler if he wrestled somewhere else. At the new major Wrestling Promotion “Somewhere Else Wrestling”. I can´t show you how the article was designed because of the nextgen issue i told you about, but that probably doesn’t matter since i can still keep the correct order. Everything that actually belongs directly to the article is written as block-quote, that i can comment on it in between.
Teaser: We all know Bryan Danielson. Most of us love seeing him in ROH. Most of us are thankful that he is still around. On the other Hand, he should be thankful to wrestle in ROH. Why? Scramble Mag´s own Sebastian Trappe (that´s me, yay) figured out what could have happened to him if he would have to wrestle somewhere else.
Article: Aberdeen – Yes, it´s true! Bryan Danielson is no longer with ROH! He just signed with the new major Wrestling-Promotion Somewhere Else Wrestling. We have an exclusive Report from the most recent creative Meeting where SEW-Officials presented “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson with his new In-Ring-Character and Look!
The Creative Team consists of 5 persons. Annie, Wayne, Mince, PPPaul and RSWPO, which is short for Random Sucker Without Personal Opinion. Similarities to real life people might be intended, but i wouldn´t tell you about it if you asked me if that was a WWE Parody.
That´s what they had to say to Bryan:
Annie: Bryan, nobody will buy this “best in the world” gimmick. It makes you unreachable for the fans.
PPPaul: The Fans probably don´t know anybody who is the best in the world in something.
Wayne: We want you to be something that they can relate to!
RSWPO: Yeah, that´s right!
Mince: We will pay millions of dollars to make you look like a normal citizen with a normal job. Our great graphic department will photoshop your Promo-pictures into crappy quality, just like pictures that everyone could take.
RSWPO: Yeah, that´s right!
Mince: Welcome to Somewhere Else BRIAN “THE TOOL” CONSTRUCTION!
So yeah, Bryan Danielson became Bryan “the Tool” Construction. I chose that because he is one of the best “workers”, not because he´s a tool. I also had things in mind for other wrestlers for the next issues, but i just noted them and didn´t work them out. I will tell you about them and about Kyle´s column “Tales from the Town” in the next Part. Probably up Sunday or so.
